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Peter Huebner

In article m,
kens says...
This post is aimed at all you sinophobes out there.

I'm getting a little tired of hearing the complaint "___ is a piece of
****: what do you expect? It's made in China!".

Now it is true that a lot of crap--boatloads of it, literally--does come
from that great country. We've all seen it, used it, chucked it out.

But bear in mind the historical precedent: some of you are probably old
enough to remember the similar tarring of anything that had the label
"Made in Japan" on it. Anything Japanese was considered worthless.
Compare to today.

I'm finding more and more that "Made in China" really doesn't mean
anything about the quality of an item. Clearly, Chinese workers, as
underpaid as they may be, are quite capable of making anything as well
as anyone else in any other part of the world.

Part of the problem is that we're placing blame in the wrong place. The
*real* problem seems to be "Made in [anyplace] but designed in the U.S.
[or some other place]".

I'll tell you what MOST gets my goat: the materials science. Plastics
made in China seem to have about half the lifespan of plastics made in
Thailand. If that ... some stuff starts to crumble a week after it comes
out of the box.

Generally this is not quite as much a problem with stuff designed in XXX
and made in China, because they tend to do QC, but it happens still. Our
Bosch washing machine, when delivered, turned out to be manufactured
there. Within a week, two switches had disintegrated. Our friend bought
the same model, and found herself holding the plastic handle for the
door in her hand inside the first month.

Tools made from what can only be described as potmetal ... ok, the
Chinese don't have the Exclusive on that one, but they excell at it.
I've had Chinese 'stainless' go rusty 3 weeks after unpacking and
removing the gel-packs.
Chrome plating turning into a razor edged hazard in a space of weeks or
even days...

I used to laugh at some Chinese made knives - they obviously had been
copied as a design by people who had no idea of the intended use.
Cutting edge blunt and 1 mm wide. I've seen a lot of that sort of thing
in fact. Mimicry without understanding the functionality of the item.

I'm perfectly well aware of the Japanese example, and I fully expect the
same thing to happen with Chinese made goods. Just as it happened with
the Taiwanese and the South Koreans. I've no problems buying Japanese or
Taiwanese made, somewhat more weary of Korean stuff still, except
electronics.

But clearly, the Chinese are not there yet. And with their sanctioned
policy of 'saving face is more important than dealing with problems or
addressing the issues' this may take longer for China to get up to speed
and communicate reliably with the rest of the world. There's been a lot
of **** happening this last year in industrial relations between China
and Australia and New Zealand, because neither side understood how to
bridge this cognitive dissonance.

Some time in the last couple of years we had a German engineer & family
as a Servas guest and he'd just come off a tour of duty in China, as an
adviser on building up a car factory (I think, for local production of
VWs) there. We asked him if he would buy one of those Chinese built
cars. He went "coughcoughcough maybe not just yet".
Lol.

Personally, I shall await such time as ... for the time being I avoid
them as much as possible, even if I have to pay 20 times the price, and
no kidding.

f.w.i.w. -P.